March 19, 2007

The Diana Fountain on Piazza Archimede at night.
Syracuse at night is a photographer’s paradise. The lights of the harbour and the illuminated monuments create a very special atmosphere.
The photo above was taken with my Minolta Dynax 9 in the blue hour on Fujichrome Velvia using the camera flash and a remote controlled flash as fill-in.

March 4, 2007

The lunar eclipse, seen a few minutes ago in Wiesbaden from my kitchen window.
Fortunately the clouds broke although there always was a little bit of a hazy cloud screen making the photo somewhat less sharp than desirable.
Minolta 7d, Tokina 80-400, image cropped.

January 18, 2005

There are several ways to see Abu Simbel:
you can take the convoy. This is the cheapest and most popular option, giving you, however, little more than an hour at the site!
The luxury way is to take one of the ships cruising lake Nasser.
We opted for the plane instead: this gave us time to visit the site at daybreak, before the big crowds.
A side-effect of this approach was that we also saw the sound and light show at night.
While we enjoyed the illuminated temple, the laser projections simply were too much!
The picture above shows the Ramses temple with laser beams behind it.
If the statues look a bit blurry: this is due to the fact that during the long exposure time several images were projected on them…

Even worse: The temples were (ab)used as an projection screen! Here you can barely discern the Nefertari temple under the projected image:
more photos of Egypt

May 8, 2004

High up in the Chilean Andes, at about 4000 meters, there is a famous geyser: El Tatio.
In the early morning, this is a truly magical place with ice, steam and many colours.
However, this spectacle only lasts for a short time, a few hours after sunrise there isn’t really much to see.
This is why many travelers leave San Pedro de Atacama at night and reach the place before sunrise.
It’s worth it. Take some hot beverages and warm clothes - it can be bitterly cold with temperatures well below 0.

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April 9, 2004

I rented a Braun slide scanner that is able to scan up to 100 slides in one go. This could be the perfect solution for me - I have thousands of unscanned slides.
Unfortunately, although this is a very good idea, the scanner itself still leaves a lot to be desired. Colours are fairly neutral, but very often, it will not correctly detect the format of a picture and try to scan a “portrait” as a “landscape” or vice versa.. It’s also quite fond of simply cutting of parts of dark pictures. A nightmare for night photographers.
Having said that, I was able to scan quite a few pictures, so the future of these pages is not in doubt.

February 23, 2004

Taken in Agrigento, Sicily.
Here, I had some difficulties. No technical issues, but as soon as I had mounted the camera on my tripod, a guardian appeared, telling me in Italian that professional photographers were not allowed to take photos without a special permit (needless to say that you would have had to go back to town and surely, the office wouldn’t be open at that time).
Pointing out that I’m not a pro didn’t help either. After all, I was using a tripod!
Fortunately, I had taken a number of hand-held shots before as well as some pictures on the tripod.

Still, if you are the proud owner of a professional looking camera and/or a big tripod, I’d recommend that when visiting historic sites at night you either enquire beforehand whether you would need a tripod, - or take as many hand-held pictures as you can and only then hurry up to use your tripod.

All photos on Travelphoto NET: Copyright Laurenz Bobke.
Copyright for the photos on the Outstanding Travel Photos blog: the individual photographer Republication only with my written permission, and only with proper credit (including a link back to this site if shown on the web).